Once you've stayed in one place long enough, it begins to feel like home.

~*~*~

We landed in Paris. Outside in the drizzling rain, flashed red and yellow lights while Parisian police cars scouted the runway. The plane erupted into a clap, the children happy that they've arrived home. It was 10pm and landing procedures went faster than ever. The French were efficient, when they wanted to be.

We exited the plane into the airport. And for a moment, I felt oddly safe and secure. The familiar rhythmic hum of French conversation, somehow always a notch softer than English speech. The sound of cheeks kissing among reunited friends and relatives. The faint smell of smoke lingering in the air. French children dressed like miniature adults, who were expected to behave no less than such. And their impatient French mothers who didn't blink an eye before insulting their little ones, always followed by a s'il vous plaît that sounded more like a threat than a nicety.

"Hurry up!", a French mother once yelled impatiently at her two young children in the bathroom. "What are you two doing! The whole table is waiting for you to eat CAKE!" nearly screaming the last sentence under her breath. "But Maman, please, the toilet has not been flushing," her five-year-old daughter replied calmly, entirely undisturbed.

I walked out onto the streets and realized that I had forgotten I was in a foreign country. Everything seemed so normal and exactly how I thought it ought to be. I had to remind myself that I was actually in Europe, a land far away from where I came from. That's when I knew that I was finally feeling like home.